Another Fusion question

[jyvonne27]

Hi I have a Macbook 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1 GB of Ram that I bought in February 07. I need to start running windows on it because I need to run Quickbooks Pro and MS Office for school. I am considering getting Fusion as I have read a lot of good things about it on this forum and others. I did have a couple of questions about it, and they might be dumb ones because I haven't used this type of program before.

1) How easy is it to install and run Fusion with Windows XP?

2)Can I run IE thru it? I prefer Firefox, but 2 training programs I want to use require IE6 and I prefer not to just do them at work.

3)If I get a virus while using the windows portion, does this affect the Mac portion?

4) I don't plan on doing any gaming, just Office 03 or 07, Quickbooks Pro and some DTP programs down the line like Photoshop and InDesign. Would I be ok running this or do I need to use Bootcamp too?

TIA for any help with this!

 

[scoobe]

answers

1) Easy, just like installing it on a Wintel, some steps are even automated (e.g. Win key entry).
2) yes. just don't update to IE 7
3) No! The VM (Virtual Machine) is sandboxed, aside from the fact that they are different operating systems.
4) You can run those apps just fine in Fusion. Since you have an Intel core2duo, the processor has special calls to help speed virtualization. The only drawback is the amount of RAM you have. In the VM's you specify how much RAM to give the VM. Once you give it to the VM, it is effectively take up from the host. So, if you give up 512MB of your ram to Fusion, your Mac is left with only 512 MB. I would upgrade your ram to 2-4 GB before trying to run any app other than IE6, or other simple apps (no Office, adobe, etc.). If you haven't gotten the Adobe ones yet, I recommend getting the native Mac versions.